So I make it really simple. I’d say art is: “That which you have no choice but to do, because your soul demands it”.
~ Hugh MacLeod
Yes, it’s a fairly flawed definition. But it illustrates something that most people don’t get about artists or entrepreneurs. We do it, because if we don’t, life feels empty. The downside being, it doesn’t exactly come with an easy life.
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One day I’ll be a filmmaker! One day I’ll be a famous artist! One day I’ll be a CEO! One day I’ll be a Creative Director! One day I’ll be a Venture Capitalist! And so forth.
~ Hugh MacLeod
Then you get to a certain age and you realize that the time for “One Day” is over. You’re either doing it, or you’re not. And if you’re not, a feeling of bitter disappointment starts hitting you deep into the marrow. Which explains why we all know so many people in their 30s and 40s having mid-life crisis’.
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Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us—because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us—because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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This quote, I think, also alludes to the problem of people “not getting” new ideas. It turns out that the same problem exists for old ideas to which people have grown unaccoustomed through lack of use.
Online discussion in forums is not a new idea. It’s a time-tested idea; They can be a space to focus interaction. There are ground rules. There’s a border defining what’s inside and what’s outside. Those inside have skin in the game. There is accountability.
The challenge is for each of us to resume engaging in reasoned discourse with others. That can be done in many places, not just in online forums. But in general, we’ve lost it in, (something like,) the last ten years when the current incarnation of the social networks rose and ate our attention.
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Gillard had a very simple ethos: “If your stuff isn’t world-class, you’re not going to make it”.
~ Hugh MacLeod from, «https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2021/03/19/world-class-or-bust/»
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The other day I was in a Zoom break-out room with a few other podcasters. I was talking about how for 2021 I’m focusing on doing in-person interviews. How being a slave to a weekly schedule was (is, would continue to be,) putting pressure on creating podcast episodes. Most podcasters—well, every single one that I know of, but there must be some out there who aren’t, so I’m writing “most”… Most podcasters are willing to (happy to?) record virtually as that enables them to stay on their weekly production schedules.
Aside: Everyone believes that regular production is critical for podcast success. I disagree. “What’s one important truth that most people would disagree with you about?” is a good question, and this is currently the best answer that I have.
There are millions of podcast shows and many more millions of episodes. I don’t want to make a single episode of Movers Mindset unless it has some particular value or is special in some way; The human race doesn’t need simply, “one more podcast episode.” I believe that in-person, with the right guest, and with me doing my best work I can co-create something of value to humanity.
And “do it every week” doesn’t figure into that formula at all.
The idea of trying to do something at a world-class-or-bust level is a fairly new one for me. I have lots of hobbies and mostly I don’t care about being world class. But I do care about the Movers Mindset podcast being world class.
Do you have anything you’re intentionally pushing to that level?
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So you want to achieve greatness. You’ve decided that ho-hum mediocrity is not for you. Alrighty then. Well, if you’re going to do that, you have to make a choice: whether to take The Big Road or The Little Road.
~ Hugh MacLeod from, «https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2020/09/18/go-big-go-small-just-go/»
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It turns out that this rhymes with my vision and mission. (Please start here if you just thought, “what vision and mission?”) I was deep in the workshop trying to find my vision and mission, when this post from MacLeod drifted through my sphere of awareness. I think if I hadn’t already been in the middle of doing the hard work of orienteering, this post would have tipped me into starting the hard work.
So my question for today is: If you don’t feel like you have a clear vision and mission, what would you have to expose yourself to which would be likely to make you tip into being compelled to find them?
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Nobody cares. Do it yourself.
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Somehow these less-than-ideal conditions raised his game, spurred him on to greatness. There’s a definite lesson here. Fair winds do not a great captain make. We dream of finding our own greatness one day, but we want it to happen when the sun is shining.
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One—particularly one named “Craig”—can also veer too far in the other direction. Continuously choosing the most arduous path towards each goal is exhausting.
Random weather metaphor for life: (Weather geeks: This is written for the Northern Hemisphere.) Large storms rotate. They always rotate in the same direction. Have you seen a stop-motion video made from satellite photos of a hurricane? If you are standing on the shore, facing an oncoming storm, you can try to avoid it by fleeing to your left, or to your right. (Presuming you ignored the warning yesterday to simply go inland.) If the center is coming directly towards you, and you have a car and just a few minutes… which way do you flee? Left, or right? To the left, the motion of the entire storm, coming at you, adds to the winds of the rotating storm. To the right, the motion of the storm, subtracts from the winds of the rotating storm. A storm with 100mph winds, coming at you at 30mph… Flee left and you get 130mph winds. Flee right and you get 70mph winds.
Seems to me that’s a good metaphor for life. “Oh shit, here comes a storm.” Maybe I should consider which way to go, rather than just fleeing like a rabbit in whatever direction I happen to be facing.
Hey also, while I’m doing weather: The Saffir-Simpson Scale has only 5 categories for a reason. It’s designed to be easy to understand when you hear the number. I sometimes hear talk that we should add a Category 6. Nononono. Category 5 already means, literally, that you should evacuate because nothing survives the 250kmh/160mph sustained winds of a Category 5 storm. So, what would having a Category 6 add? “srsly bro’, flee!”
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Stop searching for magic tricks. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. The fool will find this idea depressing. The wise person will find this liberating. So it goes.
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No.
But I do still agree with Hugh.
You see, it’s really a paradox: Understanding that the trick is that there is no trick enables you to see the trick.
Only after you truly believe there is no trick, and you truly roll up your sleeves and get to work—and not just work for a day or a week or a year, but instead truly pour your entire self into something…
Only after you truly believe there is no trick, and you truly roll up your sleeves and get to work, can you understand what the trick really is.
Reading this now, you either know the trick—congratulations, honestly and I’m sorry you had to suffer along the way but look what you’ve learned…
Reading this now, you either know the trick, or you need to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
What? …you thought I was going to tell you the trick? But, I just did.
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